The Man Who Knew Too Much.

There is a sports show I often listen to on the radio more or less every day at work. During the summer months there is not much to talk about as most of the collegiate sports are not in session, so they have to fill the time on air with whatever they can. So they asked the question: Would knowing everything be a good idea, or would you want to know everything if you could?

The show was pretty funny as the hosts went back and forth and the callers gave their two cents on the idea. While they did have some interesting points, I think they largely missed the bigger point of the question. While I did not expect the show to fully grasp the question that they asked, I thought they would have come up with some better insights as the main host was a lawyer and quite intelligent. Still I think they missed the deeper philosophical meaning of the question.

If you could truly know everything, I would think that you would be omnipotent.

I think if you truly knew everything, everything there was to know, you would be omnipotent, no not something you need a little blue pill for. While omnipotent is not the word I want to use, I think it fits, but I am not sure you would be “all powerful” knowing everything as the actual definition says. However, if knowledge is power, then I think the term fits extremely well. I suppose that if you truly knew everything, every human thought, every human decisions, how the universe works, where certain particles would be from one second to the next. I think that nothing would be out of the realm of possibility for that person, so by default I think they would be omnipotent.

So with that being said a deity no matter which religion you believe in I would imagine knows everything or at least that is what the cannon of your religion says about your deity. The radio station never made this distinction about the question, and seemed to keep the discussion light hearted in accordance with their audience. That is totally fine, but again I think they missed a major point of contention.

I also think they seemed to keep the “knowledge of everything” here locally, meaning they did not account for cosmic understanding. So their knowledge of everything was bound to the earth and human activities alone. Don’t get me wrong I think a person that knew or had knowledge of any and all human activities would undoubtable be the most powerful person on the planet. A person who not only knew that, but also understood the deepest and most profound workings of the universe would, in my option, be the most powerful being in the universe. Which I think by default would make you some sort of god.

If knowledge is power, then I think supreme and absolute knowledge would grant supreme and absolute power. But regardless of all this, would you want to know everything either locally or cosmically?